Thermography exam

kjackie02

Just wondering if anyone has heard of this exam? It is a completely painless exam that uses infrared camera to detect metabolic and temperature differences which may indicate early changes in breast tissue.
It costs about $200 and most insurances dont cover it. Just wondering if anyone has had this test?
Jackie

suave

I would love to know more as well. I was reading about it. It is supposed to not give you any radiation.

rubytuesday

Have read about it but haven't had it. I'm too am interested in it because of the NO radiation factor.

leaf

My friend had it. She is extremely claustrophobic, so she can't handle mammos emotionally. She is Very Small Breasted (normally never needs to wear a bra - I don't know if her small breasts increases the accuracy or not), she was hoping that any potential cancer would be near the breast surface and thus easier to see.

The way she described it, she was Very Cold and she had to hold still. I think it lasted for at least 30 minutes. I think she had a cold air running over you the whole time. You can't run a fever, and you may have to be in a certain part of your menstrual cycle (though I may be making this up and remembering it wrong.)

She paid for it herself out of pocket. She wants to be on estrogen postmenopausally (it doesn't matter what I say however diplomatically), so the doc required some sort of breast screening. The thermogram was acceptable for this purpose to the doc.

kjackie02

Thanks for the information leaf.I just wonder how accurate the test is. I think we will be hearing more about it in the future. Not many places are offering it yet.
Jackie

kimmytoo

duke is running a trial of sorts for this. my onc asked about it for me (but found out i had mets before it all started) from what she said to me, they think that there are changes to blood supply before the tumor starts (which would show a 'warmer' area on these photos)... my onc seemed to think that these would potentially show problems before they were detectable by radiography.

leaf

I don't know hardly anything about this except from what my friend told me, but looks like it may be complicated.
Irradiated skin may take over a year to come back to normal. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query...l=pubmed_DocSum

but thermography may have a place in breast imaging http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query...l=pubmed_DocSum

There is a lot of high tech stuff when I did a very quick Pubmed search- lots I do not understand.

It sure would be nice to have more reliable tests!

learnin

My understanding is that thermography is not as sensitive as mammography. If a person is hi risk, and wants to avoid radiation, MRI would be worth looking into, but much more expensive.

Anonymous

Ontario

Moderators notified of above spammer.
P.S. Hi Corrine!

Anonymous

I just asked about the reliability of thermography at my last follow-up. The radiologists at UNC seem to view it as inadequate for accurate diagnostic purposes and it was even suggested that it yields a higher number of false positives because it picks up alot more than malignancies and doesn't differentiate well. Maybe it needs further fine tuning before it can be relied upon..?

Marin